Meeting & Agendas

The meeting was called to order by Deborah at 1:00 p.m.

Deborah ended the meeting letting the committee know that she will make the SCANS Learning Objectives available to the committee to begin building ideas for the Department Program Objectives; reach out to the instructors of the HPRS courses, and our adjunct instructor Bonnie Wood, to clarify the course content and differences between the courses; reach out to ACC Career Services to connect with medical office employers and understand their needs for an administrative assistant position; and follow up with Financial Aid for an updated explanation regarding disbursements for the flex-entry courses. Deborah will make all the follow up information available to committee members before the next meeting. We will aim to meet again in September or October to continue working on the topics discussed today. The meeting was adjourned at 2:08 p.m.

The meeting was opened with a welcome, and existing members briefly introduced themselves. Erica Wright introduced herself as our newest member of the committee, and also our new full-time Faculty for the department. We are very happy to have her join the department. Jennifer Dominguez joined and introduced herself as a new member. She is the Career Center Manager at Texas Workforce Solutions on Burleson Road in Austin, and replaces Roberto Perez, who retired last year.

Deborah began the discussion to review the minutes for the September 28, 2020 meeting. Everyone reviewed the minutes. The committee unanimously approved the Spring 2021 minutes.

Deborah shared that the department needs to create comprehensive program objectives, and asked the committee to participate in developing these objectives. Deborah explained that she has been restructuring her four Face-to-Face courses into the Hyflex format so students can attend in-person, or synchronously online in the same semester as needed to accommodate their schedules and responsibilities. During this process, she was asked for our program objectives, and realized that we need to create new, updated program objectives to give the department clear direction in developing course content and teaching modalities. Deborah then shared a document in Google Docs the committee can collaborate on with ideas about creating program objectives to enhance and strengthen our program for our students and employers that we work with. Mary Joy asked if the objectives would be for our degrees or certificates, and Deborah explained she would like to create objectives for the entire department, and then align the certificates and degrees with the major objectives. We want to create broad program objectives to describe the overall readiness of our students to successfully become employed as administrative assistants. Marcela said she thought of skills such as effective communication, and efficient use of MS Office and G-Suite applications. Deborah agreed, and shared that we need to use Bloom’s Taxonomy of Measurable Verbs to construct the objectives. She also mentioned a goal of the department is to have all of our courses QM (Quality Matters) Certified, which we are in the process of doing. Deborah created a shared folder on Google drive that includes Bloom’s Taxonomy, all of our Master Syllabi, and the document to work on to create the new objectives. Erica also shared that she has been working on getting all of her courses QM Certified and that process does ask for program objectives and course objectives, and she has been using the SCANS Skills Learning Objectives as a guide, and thought we could do that and extract the broader objectives that would apply to all of our awards. Mary Joy added that we can use the department website as a source of program objectives and what skills students will master in the program. Deborah added that she will compile the SCANS Objectives and we will make them available to committee members to help write the new program objectives.

Deborah began the discussion by sharing two slides from the Apprenticeship PPT presentation that is being developed. The first slide describes the Training Plan and the awards students would complete in the program and the time frames. The program design is based on the CE Micropathways program implemented earlier this year. Students complete pre-apprenticeship coursework in the CE micropathway, and when that is done, they are eligible to work as an Assistant I with ACC, while concurrently taking courses to complete the micropathway. Then they are eligible to apply for an Admin. Assistant II position with ACC. This process takes about nine months. Secondly, Deborah presented the next slide discussing the Employer commitment. In this case, we are asking ACC to be the employer and support the students by covering their CE tuition and providing apprenticeship employment because as a large college, ACC has many administrative assistant positions to support this program. In this process, students will gain on-the-job experience that is required for many administrative assistant positions. Students will also have the opportunity for a wage increase when moving to an Admin. Assistant II position. The program includes a mentor to provide guidance, direction, and encouragement to support students in the program. Mary Joy asked for clarification about the introductory courses students will take to qualify for the apprenticeship program. Deborah explained that students take the Foundation Skills Micropathway first to learn Keyboarding, Data Entry, Word, and Excel, and then also take Administrative Office Procedures so they will understand how an office works and they can apply their skills to the apprenticeship position. We feel this prepares them in lieu of one-two years required experience that many positions ask for and our students have not had the opportunity to work in an office up to this point. Mary Joy asked how the courses would be paid for, and Deborah and Marcela explained that students would need to pay for the CE Micropathway, either with scholarships, which are limited, or other assistance through the Texas Workforce Commission, or using the TPEG Grant. Ultimately, we are asking ACC to pay tuition costs for students while they work, so they can finish the program debt-free and not carry a debt burden while they begin their new career as administrative assistants.

Deborah introduced the topic of changing the degree requirement for HPRS 1206 to HPRS 1106 Medical Terminology course to possibly lighten the study load for students, as long as HPRS 1106 would adequately prepare them to perform an administrative assistant position in a medical office. Cynthia went on to explain that many students work extremely hard while taking the HPRS 1206 course and still fail the course and need to repeat it. The syllabi have very similar course objectives and descriptions, and we wanted to ask the committee for their ideas. Juanita asked why the course was only two credits for so much work, and we think it might be related to trimming credit hours off some courses to meet the newer limit of 60 credit hours for an ACC Associate’s Degree. Deborah added that if we were able to substitute the 1106 for the 1206 course we would lose a credit hour for the degree, and we could add a credit hour to the POFT 2286 Internship course to make it three credit hours so the degree would still be 60 credits. She also expressed concern that our students get discouraged with the program after failing this course and sometimes they do not continue, or stay out for a while, and we want to help them without sacrificing the integrity of the program. Marcela then suggested we contact employers to confirm what students will need in a medical admin office position and get more information before we make a change. She shared that she needed to learn medical terminology very quickly for a veterinary admin/manager position she had, and it was very important to understand the terms very well to be able to perform the job adequately. She felt the one-hour course would not prepare our students well enough for a medical admin position. Mary Joy agreed with Marcela, and Juanita also mentioned that the department used to have one or two medical professionals on the committee. Deborah agreed that we can follow up with our adjunct instructor, Bonnie Wood, for her professional opinion, and also reach out to the instructors of these courses for more information, and add the results to the agenda for our next meeting. Jennifer also suggested that we check with ACC Career Services to recruit medical office employers to join the Advisory Committee to advise the department on medical admin assistant employment requirements, and possibly help place students in employment after they graduate.

This topic will be reviewed in the next committee meeting.

Deborah shared that she had been notified by the Financial Aid Department that the way financial aid has been disbursed for our flex-entry courses has been incorrect and the process will have to be adjusted to meet current criteria. Financial Aid for the next semester cannot be disbursed until students have completed all of their courses from the previous semester. This means if a student is in a Fall Session 2 course that starts in September and ends in February of the next year, they cannot receive their FA for the Spring semester Session 1 until they have completed Session 2 of the Fall semester. This will delay any disbursements for Session 1 of the next semester, and could affect their ability to enroll in classes at the beginning of the semester. Deborah wanted to inform the committee of this new development so we can start understanding how we can help our students stay in our classes and be supported with financial aid. She has been investigating how other education institutions work with this issue, such as Western Governor’s University, and others, and will report her findings at the next committee meeting.

Deborah shared that the department has hired our (former) adjunct instructor, Erica Wright, as our new full-time faculty instructor. This leaves her adjunct position open to be filled and Deborah is exploring whether a recent candidate for the full-time faculty position is interested in accepting the adjunct position. The department does want to add another adjunct to help share the load of our classes and have more instructors trained in our courses to meet the needs of the department. She will have more information at the next committee meeting.